Wednesday, June 15, 2011

An interesting question came up on the ebizQ Web 2.0 forum today. As everyone must know by now, Facebook lost more than 5% of its user in the U.S. last month, and if you haven't heard, here's an article at Computerworld. The question is whether this signals an underlying shift in social media?

Most answers came down to something along the lines of "Social Media is a fad and all fads fade away eventually..."

But, is the fad Social Media or is the fad really facebook, twitter, etc.?

Social media is a broad category of media that enables social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques, and by leveraging web-based and mobile technologies to turn one-way communication into a two-way interactive dialogue. Facebook and Twitter are just tools. For technology geeks like myself the distinction is akin to that between SOA and Web Services.

A couple of reasons can help explain what's going on:

Facebook fatigue as users get tired and/or bored with facebook.

More exciting or relevant options become available. The Social Media landscape is lush with tools of which facebook is just one option. My gut tells me that if we added up all the new users across the many different Social Media sites they would more than make up for the 5% loss that facebook had. Also, more than likely these 5% users that defected facebook went to one of the other options thus having no impact on Social Media usage overall.

So, I agree facebook usage might go down as the fad loses intensity but Social Media on the whole is here to stay.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

On the surface it might seem like a "giant leap for mankind". The Pentagon has finally acknowledged what many of us have long believed (and known) to be true - Cyber attacks are every bit as dangerous, if not more, as any other conventional attack and should be counted as an act of war.

Isn't it about time?

It's a well known fact that no other country has the capability to match our (U.S.) armed forces - air, land, or sea. However, in recent years a fourth dimension - Cyber Space - has come into prominence where we are highly vulnerable for at least two key reasons:

1. The barriers to entry for establishing the capability and conducting cyber warfare are significantly less than those for the same capabilities in the conventional warfare, which is where many Eastern European countries and others such as China can reap huge benefits from relatively little capital investment and their huge numbers of math, science, and computer scientists.

2. Our heavy reliance on our extremely sophisticated, connected, and converged data and utility networks makes us more vulnerable to the same cyber attack that we could carry out on a another country that is far less reliant on their cyber networks.

Pentagon's announcement comes on the heels of an admission by Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman, Geng Yansheng, in a briefing in Xinhua. The elite unit - part of China's People's Liberation Army - is called the "cyber blue team" and will supposedly not only protect Chinese networks from external cyber attack but could also be utilized as a first strike, offensive mechanism in warfare. According to the Channel 4 news story, governments and companies around the world are already concerned that their networks come under regular attack from Chinese hackers. In February, for example, Chinese hackers targeted multinational energy firms to steal information, in an attack called "Night Dragon.

In my opinion, the Pentagon has been slow to react to the cyber threats that have existed for a while. There are numerous examples of cyber warfare having been used in the past decade. So why the lethargic response from the Pentagon? All I can say is it's "better late than never." The announement from the Pentagon yesterday formalizing cyber attacks as an act of war is definitely a step in the right direction as is the establishment of a new cyber command last year, headed by the director of the National Security Agency, to consolidate military network security and attack efforts.

These are great first steps but we still have a long way to go in protecting ourselves from cyber attacks. Cyber war is here to stay exposing us more than ever and it is up to us to be ready for it whether we like it or not.

About Tarak

Tarak is a highly experienced, results-oriented, business leader, skilled enterprise architect, and published thought leader. He has demonstrated the ability to lead diverse teams of professionals in achieving mission critical results in a variety of highly competitive industries, cutting-edge markets, and fast-paced environments. His broad professional background and excellent education provides a solid foundation to his ability in solving challenging business problems with innovative enterprise solutions that leverage and align IT capabilities with evolving business needs.
As a testament to his thought leadership, he has authored Living in the Innovation Age and co-authored Professional Java Web Services. He has also published over 80 articles on Innovation, IT Transformation, and Enterprise Architecture.